


A little help from my friends

by impossibletruths



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Grog is a decent student, Keyleth makes a good teacher, Sparring, Training, Vox Machina enjoys a good fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7586830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impossibletruths/pseuds/impossibletruths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It all seems pretty simple to him. She knows, he doesn’t, she can teach him. Two plus two equals–– well, whatever. Point is, there's nothing wrong with asking for a little help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A little help from my friends

 

Listen, if smashing skulls were an academic discipline, Grog would be the top of his field (that’s what Scanlan says, anyways, and Grog’s not sure what it means but he believes the gnome). But being the top means you gotta keep picking up new tricks, and sometimes that means asking for help from the person bodily chucking enemies across the battlefield. So, a few days after their most recent fight, Grog goes in search of Keyleth.

He finds her, as expected, in the garden. She’s tucked under a tree, sitting cross-legged with a book in her lap and a handful of dried herbs laid out next to her, mumbling quietly and looking over to the plants every now and again. Grog watches, kinda fascinated. He doesn’t get the whole plant thing, but it’s pretty cool to see her messing with them. It’s like Pike being all medi-titative, or when Scanlan sits still long enough to play a full song, like all the energy of raging but kept on the inside. Its own sort of art, y’know?

But Grog’s not here to watch Keyleth talk to her plants, he’s here to talk to Keyleth, so he clears his throat a little (just in case, cause he knows she doesn’t like surprises, and he doesn’t really blame her; they’ve had a lot of scary shit surprise them, and it gets mixed up sometimes) and calls out, “Keyleth?”

Her head snaps up, eyes wide for a second, and then she recognizes him and her alarm turns to curiosity. She brushes her hair out of her face.

“Oh, hi Grog. Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, no, everything’s great, I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Oh.” He can see the confusion on her face. And he gets that. Grog doesn’t ask stuff a lot. He definitely doesn’t ask Keyleth. Most of the time he goes to Pike or Scanlan, but he’s got a specific question and she’s the one who knows the answer, so Keyleth it is. “Um, sure. What is it?”

“There was that move you did, right? In the last fight? And you just like––” He mimes tossing something, the same way Keyleth had when they were fighting those ugly fuckers a few days ago. “And I was wondering if maybe you teach me?”

Keyleth looks at him, her brow furrowed. “You want... me to teach you?”

Grog shrugs “Well, yeah. I mean, I know a lot about cracking skulls and all that––” he’s sort of an expert on the subject if he does say so himself “––but I don’t know how you did that and I wanna learn, so...” It all seems pretty simple to him. She knows, he doesn’t, she can teach him. Two plus two equals–– well, whatever.

Keyleth keeps staring at him for a bit, just long enough for him to start to feel kinda weird about this, and then she sort of lights up, the way Pike does when she’s doing her divine stuff except on the inside, all bright and happy n’ shit.

“Yeah,” she says, nodding. “Okay, yeah!” She closes her book with a heavy thud and stands up, brushing dirt and grass from her clothes. “Um, we might need a little more space though.”

“Lead the way, Master Keyleth,” Grog jokes with a sweeping hand, and she smiles at him and leads him out of the garden and into the yard. Trinket lies curled in the shade of the keep, and Shayne and Cordell patrol the wall, but otherwise the grassy area is empty. Keyleth comes to a stop in the middle, where there are no trees, and turns around to face him.

“It’s um, it’s something I learned from the Earth Ashari,” she says. “It’s kind of hard to explain. It’ll be easier if I show you.” She says it like a question, and Grog frowns.

“You mean like, you throw me and I figure it out?”

Keyleth nods. “Yeah. I mean, if that’s okay?”

Of fucking course it’s okay. Grog’s always down for a scuffle.

“Right,” he says, planting his feet and cracking his neck. He grins at the slight woman in front of him. “Let’s do this.”

Keyleth grins back, and closes her eyes, and as he watches she shifts, like she’s pulling the ground into her, turning into stone and dirt, and then the earth elemental mirrors his stance and crooks a finger at him. Grog’s grin widens as he charges.

He doesn’t rage. He wants a clear head to remember this. Raging is fun and all, and he loves knowing he’s the scariest motherfucker in a fight, but it’s not that helpful when you’re trying to pick up new tricks. That doesn’t stop him from throwing his all into it. He charges forward with a bellow, keeping careful watch of how Keyleth moves, how graceful she is even as a being of stone and earth. She steps to his side, and reaches out, and––

And he’s flying through the air, the ground rushing to meet him before he can remember to twist and roll, and he gets a mouthful of dirt and grass, his ears ringing. He pushes himself to his feet to see Keyleth standing half a dozen feet behind him, still in a ready stance. Grog grins, charges in again, watches her step to his side and reach out and––

And he’s flying again, but this time he’s seen sort of how she used his speed against him and has just enough time to note the way she pivots before he crashes into the ground again. When he stands up he wipes the blood from his nose.

“One more time,” he says. “I’ve almost got it.”

The elemental grunts––right, yeah, she can’t really talk like this––and beckons him again. Grog charges, and Keyleth steps to his side, feet pivoting, and reaches out, and––

And he flies, but this time he tucks and rolls up from it, and understands how it works. It’s like wrestling with the herd as a kid, except not quite. There’s something more flowy about it, like she’s using him to bring him down instead of going head-to-head against his strength. Which makes sense, Grog guesses, when you’re a skinny thing like she is most of the time. It’s pretty fucking cool, actually. He rolls out his neck and turns back to her, still standing in the middle of the yard, unmoved.

“Right, okay. I think I got it.”

Keyleth nods once, and points at him.

“My turn?”

She nods again. Grog braces himself.

“Right. Alright, c’mon then.”

Keyleth stomps into the ground, then tucks her head and charges, and Grog tries to step to the side but it’s not so easy as it looks and he ends up catching her, and the two of them skid back a dozen paces before he pushes her away, and they go reeling.

Laughter rings down from the wall, and Grog looks up to find Shayne and Cordell watching, as well as Pike and Scanlan. Scanlan’s the one laughing, of course. Grog scowls.

“You wanna come down here and give it a try?” he offers, only half joking, and Scanlan raises his hands in defense.

“I am a small man,” he calls down. “I like my bits where they are, unpulverised and whole.”

“You’ve got this,” Pike calls down to him with an encouraging smile, because she’s Pike. Grog spares a smile for her and turns back to Keyleth.

“Can we try again? I really think I’ve got it.”

Keyleth shrugs, and they get back into position and try again. And again. And again. The sun moves across sky, shadows shrinking and growing again, and Grog can’t figure out how she managed to move like that. Eventually they break it off by mutual agreement, and Keyleth shifts back to herself, breathing heavily. Grog sports a bloodied nose and a bruised shoulder, and they sit in the shade of the wall, beneath the crowd they’ve drawn. Vex and Vax have joined the gnome, and the guards have been relieved but they’re hanging out anyways, watching them. Grog sees money exchange hands and scowls.

“I don’t get it,” he says, rinsing his mouth out with a water skin tossed down by Pike. “I mean, I get it, but I don’t get why I’m not getting it.”

“You’re trying too hard to be solid,” Keyleth says, drinking from a skin of her own water flask. “It’s like...” She trails off, searching for the right words. “Like knowing where someone’s going to be before they get there.”

“What d’you mean?”

“Like, when you see someone attack and you know who they’re aiming for before an attack hits?”

“Yeah, no, I get that.”

“So, you have to see where I’m going to be before I get there. Like, seeing the shape before it’s finished.”

Shapes. Alright. Grog can do shapes. Grog is great with shapes––the arc an axe makes when it cleaves down, the line of an arrow from a bow, the irritating rectangle of a shield. Shapes are great.

“So it’s like, what? A line?”

Keyleth considers that. “It’s more like a circle. You have to move around the person, but do it before they get there. Does that make sense?”

Not really, but at the same time, it does. Grog nods. “So can we try again?”

“Just give me a few minutes,” Keyleth says, and Grog makes a show of grumbling about it but really he could use the breather just as much as she can. It’s hard work, getting charged at by an elemental made of stone.

Not too much later, when the crowd above them has started to get bored, Grog and Keyleth step back out into the yard, and Keyleth shrugs and shifts into her earth elemental form.

Above them their friends cheer, excited to see them back at it, but Grog ignores them. Like a circle, being where you’re trying to go before they get to you. Move, pivot, toss. He’s not the most book smart guy out there, he’s well aware, but he knows fighting and he can do this. He’s got it. He can feel it in his bones.

Keyleth nods to him, and he nods back, and beckons. Keyleth charges forwards, and Grog sees the shapes, sees the line of her run and the arc of the throw and where he needs to be and he slips to the side, feet both light and solid beneath him, and he pivots and catches her and throws, and the elemental leaves the ground in a sweeping arc and crashes into the grassy earth with the force of a boulder.

“Yeah Grog!” he hears Pike shout above him. Keyleth picks herself up and speaks rumbling, grating words that Grog cannot understand, but from the way she’s waving her arms around he figures she’s pretty happy.

“Again,” Grog says, not joining in their celebration yet because he wants to be sure he can do it, really do it. Keyleth charges, and he moves, and she flies, and this time when he hears cheers from the wall he looks up at them with a victorious grin.

Keyleth gets back to her feet, her elemental form melting, and bounds up to him, hair flying behind her.

“That was amazing!” she tells him. “Man, it took me days to figure that one out.”

Grog puffs up a little. “Well, I am a great and mighty warrior.”

“You are,” Keyleth tells him, patting his arm, and Grog clears his throat, feeling a little awkward.

“You’re a good teacher too,” he tells her, cause she is, and you’re supposed to say thank you when people teach you sweet new moves like this. “What you said about, y’know, shapes. It helped. So, uh, thanks.”

Keyleth calms a little, bouncing excitement settling into something quieter. “You’re welcome Grog,” she tells him. “It was nice.”

Grog frowns at her, puzzled. “What, throwing me around?”

“No! Well, a little,” she admits. “But I mean, just, feeling useful. Needed.”

Grog stares at her. What’s that supposed to mean? They always need her. She’s like Pike. She sees the stuff they don’t, like how cool the world is, or when maybe they’re spending a little too long cracking skulls and not enough time making things better. And yeah, that’s kinda irritating sometimes, and kinda boring a lot of the time, but boring stuff is important too. Pike does boring stuff, and that’s super important. And Keyleth kicks ass like nobody else, when she wants to, which is awesome.

But he doesn’t really know how to say that to her, so instead he shrugs and says, “You do a good job doing your stuff. We like having your around,” because it’s true, and they do, and Keyleth looks up at him with the most anxious little smile, so Grog grunts and nudges her a little. “Don’t get all emotional on me."

“I won’t,” she promises, even though she looks a little like he just threw her across the courtyard, except it’s all in her eyes and he’s not even touching her.

“And, y’know,” Grog adds as an afterthought, “If them fancy Earth Ashari taught you any other cool tricks––”

“I’ll teach them to you,” Keyleth tells him.

Grog grins and laughs a little. “Awesome. And I’ll buy you a drink. Deal?”

She bumps his fist. “Deal.”

She’s a good person, Keyleth. A little unsure, yeah, and a little afraid, which Grog gets, and she’s trying to carry too much, which weighs you down and fucks you up in the head. But she’s trying to be bright inside, which is what really counts. Grog thinks she’ll do okay.

For now, though, they sit in the shade of the wall, dusty and bruised and successful, and listen to their friends jabber down at them as they share a well-earned drink.  


**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [teammompike](http://teammompike.tumblr.com)


End file.
